A birthday celebration for an elderly Staten Island couple ended in horror when a junkie burglar ransacking their home for pills butchered the grandpa and turned the knife on his wife, cops and neighbors said Monday.
“She was screaming, ‘My husband, my husband! He killed my husband!’ ’’ witness David Didia said of victim Vincensa Gialluisi, 66, who had just returned home from a party Sunday night with her husband, Peter, 67.
Monday was Vincensa’s birthday, and Peter’s was the day after, neighbors said.
“She came out bloody and ran over here to my daughter’s house. Her whole shirt front and back were soaked with blood. She was stabbed in the head, you could see the gashes,’’ said Didia, 77.
“We all followed her across the street. Her husband was on his back on the steps. His feet were at the top of the stairs. She walked and balanced herself against the street pole. That’s why it’s covered in blood.”
Neighbor and off-duty NYPD cop Sammy Irizarry, 42, was having a pool party at the time.
“[Vincensa] was calling for help, hanging on the gate,” he said. “She was drenched in blood. We couldn’t even see how many times she had been stabbed. He was gurgling.”
Vincensa had just driven her husband and her brother, Angelo Gallo, back to the couple’s Venus Place home around 10 p.m., police and neighbors said.
Vincensa let her brother out first and then pulled into their attached garage so Peter could exit more easily with his walker.
Suspect Dante Viggiano, 20, spotted the elderly couple entering the home through the garage and attacked them with a knife, cops said.
Viggiano, who lives about 10 minutes away, may have targeted the house because he figured the couple had prescription pills, sources said.
After butchering the defenseless Peter Gialluisi, Viggiano stabbed Vincensa, cops said.
Peter was pronounced dead at Staten Island University Hospital South, while his wife was rushed to Staten Island University North, where she was in stable condition, cops said.
Peter’s bloodied walker, with yellow tennis balls on the back legs, remained in the driveway a day after his death.
Viggiano fled to his home after the carnage, cops said. When he walked through the door bloody, his mom told him to turn himself in, sources said. He went to SIUN for treatment and was taken into custody.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Leonard Greene